Pinterest is a virtual pinboard where you can organize and share images and videos you discover on the web. Think of it as social network of visuals – where you can find images from other people with the same interest or use it to curate your own visual “interest space.”

The clean interface and simplicity of its features make it easy to use and gives you a calm feeling which perhaps accounts for its popularity. At first glance, the site attracts people interested in using it for non-work interests, such as wedding planning, decorating, scrapbooking, and family photos, but brands and nonprofit professionals are also using it to curate information related to professional and organizational topics in a visually pleasing way. But if you want to be successful, you must curate and share relevant content.

Pinterest is a small example of how the social web is evolving. There is so much content being created and shared, that making sense of it is getting harder and harder unless you have context. This is what content curation does – it joins your social graph with interest graphics. It’s explained in more detail in this TechCrunch post, The Age of Relevance. Several of the newest social platforms create “interest graphs” a map for navigating to subjects and people of interest. The Interest graph is a superset of the social graph, a people map. The interest graph includes people, things, and their linkages and it helps users navigate the information thicket. Content Curators are doing this and more platforms will facilitate curation. Pinterest is one of them.

The difference between content shared through social graphs is that sharing is a stream. That can feel overwhelming and hard to organize when lots of categorical pieces of content fly by you . The tools that create interest graphs, the curation tools, allow you to put some structure and that’s what provides the context. It is also part of what makes pinterest and other curation tools so addictive.

But remember, as Nancy Schwartz points, Relevance Rules! in her advice about campaigns, you need to be strategic about what content you’re curating and WHO you’re sharing with. Content curation should link to your integrated strategy objectives and identified audience. Otherwise, you’re wasting your time playing with a pretty shiny object.

It’s easy to use, powerfully visual, populated with cause marketing-loving women and growing like crazy. 4,000 percent in six months!

The heavy presence of women 25-44 on Pinterest is what distinguishes it from other new social media platforms, which are generally populated by men 18-24. Here’s a site that already has the audience everyone wants: women and moms who make most of the household buying decisions.

Joe also asks a few good starter questions if your nonprofit is considering setting up a presence:

Do you have an interesting or compelling story to tell with images?

Is your cause considered hip, trendy, or do you just want to be?

Are you engaged on other social media platforms?

Are you looking to reap the rewards of local SEO?

I’d add to this some questions about measurable objectives and who is the target audience.

34 Responses

This is something I’ve been thinking about for our organization over the last week or so. We don’t have a heavy “visual” focus so I have been trying to think outside the box as to how we might best utilize Pinterest. It is a perfect audience for us, so it’s just a matter of “how”…

I’m digging Pinterest for personal use – in crafts, food, reading – but from a really basic standpoint, they’re not making it obvious how organizations or companies can create brand accounts. That would be a first step towards welcoming early adopters!

Great post, Beth – thanks for sharing your perspective and thoughts on Pinterest! I, too, was drawn to it for the clean and pleasing interface. The instant gratification of the pinning and arranging is addicting! I have run into quite a few websites, though, where it will not recognize the media on the page, and thus will not let me pin them to my board. I’ve tried everything I can think of to get around it, but can’t seem to find a way! I have a board for nonprofit technology case studies, pulling in examples of organizations doing great things with technology to be more effective or efficient, and many of these case studies have great pictures or videos. But, if Pinterest doesn’t recognize the media on the page, I fall back to other content curation mechanisms like delicious or evernote.

[…] streamlined and relevant. Making it easy to share is an added bonus. Social Media specialist Beth Kanter notes that “Pinterest is a small example of how the social web is evolving. There is so much […]

[…] Several Nonprofits are experimenting with Pinterest. AARP has several boards related to it content, including “Over 50 Making a Difference. ” Amnesty International has set up a list of book recommendations, “Human Rights Reading.” National Wildlife Federation is curating wildlife photos and other visually related content. […]

[…] for me. Then I began to see posts from people like Beth Kanter, who in January 2011 wrote about using Pinterest as a curation tool and that non-profits were using it to promote their organizations and engage their communities. […]